1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to message management systems, and more particularly to a system and method for creating and managing voice mail message greetings.
2. Related Art
In today""s business environment, people often must perform multiple tasks simultaneously. This often requires that individuals be on or away from their phones when a caller attempts to reach an individual. Because the caller may want to leave more information than just a name and return phone number where the caller can be reached, voice mail is regularly used by many of today""s businesses. Voice mail allows an individual to record a personalized greeting and retrieve voice messages from the individual""s phone, in the individual""s voice mail-box. Thus, voice mail eliminates or reduces the need for a receptionist to field calls and manually write down messages. Another advantage voice mail provides is that individuals can screen their calls so that they are not bothered by unwanted phone solicitations and the like.
As voice mail systems have become more sophisticated and commonplace, a large number of organizations now rely heavily or exclusively on their voice mail systems to direct and record messages from callers. Accordingly, a business""s voice mail system is often the primary interface for the outside world, as well as for the rest of the company. As organizations place greater emphasis on customer service, the need to provide accurate and appropriate greetings are becoming more and more important. Unfortunately, although most voice mail systems allow users to record and edit their greetings, as well as record alternate greetings from their phone, most users do not bother changing their greetings once they are recorded. Thus, greetings often fail to precisely state the availability of the person trying to be reached. For example, most users do not bother editing their voice mail greeting for different scenarios, such as when they are in a meeting, on vacation, sick, on the road, available at another extension, etc.
The reason why most individuals do not regularly alter their greetings is because the user interfaces provided by most voice mail systems have limited functionality and are time consuming to use. To change a greeting, a user typically must go through a menu of choices, record their greeting, listen to their greeting, re-record the greeting if it is incorrect, and then later remember to change it back to the original greeting if necessary. Since most voice mail systems allow only two greetings, standard and alternate, it is not possible to store numerous greetings for all the different scenarios when a different greeting would be appropriate. To go through the above-mentioned steps for each different scenario is simply not worth the effort given the present state of the art. Moreover, voice mail systems do not allow a user to schedule greetings for the future. Thus, a user must remember to change his or her greeting immediately before and after each new scenario.
Given the current state of the art and the often hectic work pace common in today""s business environment, most individuals are simply unable to effectively manage their greetings. Accordingly, a need exists for a phone mail system that will allow users to easily alter and schedule their greetings.
The present invention provides a system and method for managing voice messages by (1) combining phrases with message templates to generate messages, and (2) providing a scheduling interface for scheduling generated messages. In a first aspect, the invention provides a system for managing voice messages, comprising: a phrase management module for managing phrases; a template management module for managing message templates; a message generation module for creating a message by inserting at least one phrase into a selected message template; and a scheduling system for scheduling the message.
In a second aspect, the invention provides a program product stored on a recordable media for managing voice messages, which when executed, comprises: a system for inputting a message template from a plurality of message templates; a system for selecting a phrase; and a system for creating a message by inserting the phrase into the selected message template.
In a third aspect, the invention provides a method for managing voice messages, comprising the steps of: selecting a message template; selecting a phrase; and combining the phrase with the message template to form a message.
It is therefore an advantage of the present invention to provide a system and method for creating messages based on templates and phrases.
It is therefore a further advantage of the present invention to provide system and method for scheduling greetings.